The Game
by jane0904
Summary: First - and possibly only - foray into Dr Who. Set during the current series, this is a short POV of the Tardis herself, but with cameos. Let me know what you think!


A box. A blue box made of wood, panelled and glazed, a single lock on the door to keep out intruders, a flashing light on top to ward off the night.

My chameleon circuits fried a long time ago, but in all honesty I like this illusion. It's comfortable. There could be little else that could be so non-threatening. Yet inside ...

A penny whistle sits on top of a cupboard, a scarf wrapped around the original of the Venus de Milo, and somewhere in the deepest, darkest recesses of my body there is a little yellow car. Even he hasn't explored all of me. There are nooks where unknown things live, scavenging off the scraps of time that leak from my conduits, some existing for just the blink of an eye yet holding an entire civilisation, while others ooze on the deck like viscous puddles, unchanging throughout the millennia outside.

But it's in my control room that his influence is the strongest. Cold and sterile, or growing and organic, he has always created me in his own same/not same image. Now I am altogether more quirky, all manner of objects from my stores pressed into service as handles, control yokes, even part of my mechanism, although even I have difficulty guessing what the egg whisk is doing. Still, it will probably become clear eventually. Or perhaps it's just an egg whisk.

But I love him. He is mine, in all his forms. And his companions, for however short a stay, I care for them too. Because no matter what I look like, I stay the same. His first love.

Amy is good for him. They share something, a passion, and I hope she stays. She brings out the better in him, keeps the worst at bay. For a while, anyway.

He isn't ... handsome. Not by the standards of the world he loves we spend so much time there. Interesting, yes, handsome ... no. But he has the energy of youth, despite the years he carries behind the young face.

There he is now, walking through the corridors in a striped towelling bath robe, designed – it seems – for someone entirely bigger than himself, as it bunches in folds behind the tie around his waist and drops to his heels. I remember him buying it and it fitted perfectly then.

He has a book in one hand – _Through the Looking Glass_ _(and what Alice found there) _– and a rubber duck in the other. He reads and squeaks as he walks.

And there she is, running towards him, her red hair flying like a halo around her head.

"Doctor."

"Amy." He smiles and holds up the book. "Remind me to take you to meet Charles."

"Who?"

"Charles Dodgson. Lewis Carroll, by any other name, although why he felt the need to change it I don't know. Charlie, I said to him, if you must go describing Parlageria, at least have the courage to put your own name on it."

"Doctor, there's ..." What he said obviously registers. "You mean that's a real place?"

He nods his head happily. "We fought the Jabberwocky together. Nasty beast, liked to eat people just for fun. No nutritional value to them at all, at least not to him. Gave him terrible indigestion, and the runs, which was worse, because the mess when he –"

"Doctor!"

"What?"

"Something's flashing. On the control console."

"Lots of things flash, Amy."

"And it's making a funny noise."

"Lot of things make noises."

"And it ... smells." Her nose wrinkles in disgust.

He suddenly looks interested. "What kind of smell? On a scale of one to ten, just how stomach-churning?"

She thinks for a moment. "Eight?"

"Rotten eggs, putrefaction or drains?"

"Eggs." She waves her hand in front of her face. "Definitely eggs."

"Ah ha!" He grins. "Now that is different. Sensory detection, something I was playing with few lifetimes ago, and it works!"

"Glad you're happy."

"Oh, I am. Did you see anything else? A date on the screen next to the little flashy, noise making thing perhaps?"

"1886. And a name. Moriarty."

"Mori ..." If he had much in the way of eyebrows he'd raise them into his hair. "London, England. Still in the reign of good Queen Victoria." He pauses, then runs his hand down his face. "She won't recognise me." Then, a lot more truthfully, "Well, perhaps I can keep out of her way this time."

She ignores the internal conversation. "Are you talking about Sherlock Holmes?"

"I am." He leans in towards her. "And the Napoleon of crime, Professor James Moriarty."

"You do know he's fictional, don't you?"

"That doesn't mean he isn't real." He pats her on the arm with the book. "Haven't I taught you anything?"

"Well, I just thought –"

"Too much thinking addles the brain. Besides, you'll get on beautifully with Sherlock. Lovely girl."

"Girl?"

His grin widens and he tosses the book and duck away over his shoulder. "Lead on, Amy!"

She gives him her smile, the one that says she knows the game's afoot, and turns to head back to my control room.

He follows then stops, as if something has just occurred to him. He turns, hurries back and picks up the rubber duck, stuffing it into one of his voluminous pockets where it squeaks mournfully. "Shush," he says quietly, striding after Amy once again.

The book he leaves, its pages moving gently in a breeze from somewhere in my twists and turns, making the Jabberwock dance mimsily amid the borogroves. But that is an old adventure, while others await them in all the whens and wheres of time. And I will protect them, nurture them, comfort them, as they play leapfrog in the universe.


End file.
